Music: Expect a mix of musical styles from White Denim

Thursday

The Austin, Texas, rock band White Denim flavors its basic rock 'n' roll with a potpourri of other styles, but that's kind of logical, since their origins came out of a virtual collision of bands.

White Denim, which has included tinges of punk-funk, psychedelic, country, heavy metal, and Latin jazz, just released its latest album, "Performance" on August 24, and the quartet's national tour will be stopping off at Brighton Music Hall on Tuesday night.

White Denim became a band in a sort of ad hoc, almost accidental, manner back in 2005. The band Parque Torch, with singer/guitarist James Petralli and drummer Josh Block, was playing on a bill with another band, Peach Train, which included bassist Steve Terebecki. By the end of that night, Terebecki had joined Block and Petralli and the threesome evolved into another band. White Denim was releasing its own EPs by 2007, and combined a couple of those EPs for "Workout Holiday," their debut album, which, oddly enough, was only released in the United Kingdom. It was late 2008 before the band re-worked some of those tunes and added some more for "Exposion," which became their U.S. album debut. The latest record is the group's seventh, and their music has always been noted for the different directions it takes, often record-by-record, or even cut-by-cut.

"Well, Parque Torch was James' original trio, which was cool and had no bass," explained Terebecki, from his Austin home, when we caught up with him last week, before the current tour started. "That band was a real in-you-face, riffy punk rock band, sort of like early Replacements. But of course Josh was a drummer with a real jazz background, so they played some really interesting music. Peach Train was the band I was in, sort of the band Makeup, a power trio with a lot of wah-wah used on the guitar, but basically noisy rock 'n' roll."

"I was really excited to get a chance to play with Josh," Terebecki added. "I come from Virginia originally, and I had moved to Austin fairly recently then. I had played with some really accomplished drummers in Virginia, but Josh was the first really good drummer I had heard here in Texas. We began trying to build a sound of our own, and all this time later, we're still refining it."

No matter what stylistic permutations White Denim might take over the years, it seems that a basic rock 'n' roll feel, a 1950-60s garage band sound, ends up being their foundation.

"I think basic rock 'n' roll is definitely at the root of it all, because it's all born from what we like to play onstage," said Terebecki. "Our live shows tend to be louder and more upbeat than our records anyway. We've all never been fans of performers who get up there and play all laid-back on stage. We have done a lot of experimenting with different things with our recordings, but live, in concert, we are always louder and nastier. We like to do what feels good in the moment."

White Denim has had an interesting recording career, from their first couple of discs recorded in an old caravan in the woods, to more recent efforts with some of the music world's best studio people. Along the way they've tried numerous styles on for size, and their first U.S. album was influenced by pop-rock like XTC and Squeeze. By the time of 2009's "Fits," they were exploring more extended stuff, like Yes, Jimi Hendrix and Funkadelic. Guitarist Austin Jenkins made them a quartet by the time of 2011's "D," and later that year they recorded a live album at Jack White's Third Man studio.

By 2013, White Denim was recording "Corsicana Lemonade" in Chicago, with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco producing, although according to an account in the September 2018 issue of the British music magazine Uncut, they were so taken with Tweedy's collection of vintage instruments they didn't get a lot done until they got back home. Petralli, meanwhile, had been dabbling with some solo work, and by 2015 he released "Constant Bop," a solo album under the name Bop English. After a short tour for the solo record, Petralli returned to hear the news that Jenkins and Block had quit the band.

Petralli and Terebecki recorded their next album, 2016's "Stiff," with a variety of musicians filling in the other two spots, and famed producer Ethan Johns behind the console. By this year, White Denim achieved a longtime goal, opening their own studio, Radio Milk, in Austin. That's where they recorded "Performance," with Conrad Choucroun on drums, and an assortment of musicians guesting. For this tour, keyboardist Michael Hunter will be the fourth member of the quartet.

Singles from the new album already out include the roots rocking "It Might Get Dark," and the spacey "Magazin," both of which have memorable videos. For "It Might Get Dark" the video is simply the lyrics floating in outer space, while "Magazin" is a visual feast of the tune's surreal metaphors come to life over a melody reminiscent of "Sergeant Pepper/Abbey Road" era Beatles. Another dazzling video is for the song "Fine Slime," where pictures of the band members are artfully distorted into other creatures, as the psychedelic rock grooves along. The title cut, "Performance" is an angular bit of rock, with rhythms that seem to push and pull like some giant elastic.

"We try a different approach every time we record, just to see what's out there," said Terebecki. "It's our way of keeping the record-making fresh. We collaborated with a lot of different people this time. Usually one of us will bring a riff in and once we're in the room in the studio we'll work it up, maybe write a bridge for it and then do a basic part. We tend to build songs that way, with the exception of "It Might Get Dark," which James had mapped out pretty completely when he brought it in.

"Sky Beaming" and "Performance" I put together a bit more," said Terebecki. "With 'Sky Beaming' it started as just bass and drums and then we added guitar and then synthesizer, vocals, and so on. So those tunes were really hashed out like that in the studio, with us adding parts as we went along. James had a lot of 'Good News' already done when he brought it in, on the other hand. James writes a lot more of the lyrics in the studio and he does write the majority of our music, although there are times when he'll invite Conrad and me into the process. So we all have input, more or less, but the songwriting is mostly James."

Building their songs in the studio like that, White Denim then must adapt them to live shows.

"We don't limit ourselves in the studio, as to how many parts we can add," Terebecki explained. "But live we are of course just a four-piece. We can only do so much of what is on the records. Mike on his keyboards will be doing all he can – he's the wild card – and he does a lot of the second guitar parts, for instance."

Those strikingly original videos for the new songs were an added bonus that surprised the band too.

"We've done a lot of videos over the years, and we felt most people are putting out boring ones," said Terebecki. "Our way of enjoying that process is simply to make it weird. We loved the graphic art Philip Kremer did for us and then Johnny Sanders animated it. Those first two that we have out already are really just our cover art for the album brought to life. Phillip is located here in Austin and does all our cover art and a lot of our T-shirts and posters. But Johnny blew us away with what he was able to do with the animation, in just a few days.

"We are working on having our concerts be as visually pleasing as those videos, but we still need to work on that," Terebecki said, laughing. "We don't really have a concert lighting guy, yet. We've always had good nights in Boston over the years, and have played Great Scott and The Sinclair, although this is our first time at Brighton Music Hall, so we're excited to get there."